That all changed in 1971, when McDonald's franchisee Herb Peterson set out to make an eggs Benedict sandwich. It's hard to believe in our bustling world that as late as the 1970s, fast-food restaurants opened at 11 a.m., closed at midnight and limited their menus to lunch and dinner items. Such scale also explains why McDonald's has become the world's single biggest seller of salads in just a couple of years. But when you multiply that by 31,000 restaurants and millions of customers around the world, even a tiny margin adds up. Since the company added salads to the menu, average check totals have increased by 5 percent. Compare that to a Big Mac, which sells for $2.89. A typical salad retails for $4.20 on average. Perhaps more important, McDonald's sells its salads at a premium. The fast-food chain has moved more than 500 million premium salads since 2003, equating to more than 900 million servings of fruits and vegetables. When these higher-quality salads hit the market in 2003, consumers interested in healthier fare responded enthusiastically. Instead of starting with iceberg lettuce, meal planners and developers decided on a blend of 16 lettuces. First, McDonald's decided to up the ante on quality. OK, before you fall over laughing - salads on a McDonald's most-popular list? - consider the history of the company's premium salad menu, which includes a Southwest salad, a bacon ranch salad and a Caesar salad. How the McDouble will fare with customers remains to be seen. Removing a single slice of American cheese will save about 6 cents per burger and boost cash flow per restaurant by an estimated $15,000 per year. In most stores, the double cheeseburger now costs $1.19, and in its place on the Dollar Menu resides a new product, the McDouble burger, which features two beef patties, but only one slice of cheese. In January 2009, as the price of processed American cheese increased by almost a dollar a pound, the company decided it could no longer sell its popular burger for a dollar. Of course, the mighty always fall, and the McDonald's double cheeseburger is no exception. It became the most ordered item, and as its popularity grew, the Dollar Menu reshaped McDonald's fortunes, stimulating 36 consecutive months of sales growth at stores open at least a year. No one knew it then, but that simple sandwich, the one made with two burgers and two slices of cheese, would turn the company around. A few months earlier, the company introduced its Dollar Menu, a value-priced selection of items anchored by the double cheeseburger. How could something so pedestrian, especially when compared to the Big Mac, become so important to shareholders? Well, in January 2003, McDonald's reported its first quarterly loss in 38 years. And no menu item has been more popular with investors than the double cheeseburger. McDonald's has an uncanny knack for understanding its customers and applying that knowledge to create sandwiches, sides and salads that customers buy (and buy again) millions of times a year.Ī menu item that gains popularity with customers almost always gains popularity with McDonald's investors. While some products won't ever make it into a fast-food hall of fame, others are as American as baseball and Chevrolet. At the heart of this massive growth is one thing: a diverse menu that now boasts nearly 165 items. What started in 1955 as a single store with a modest menu of burgers, fries and shakes became the leading global foodservice retailer, with more than 31,000 local restaurants serving 58 million people in more than 118 countries each day. But if a restaurant wants to go beyond the burger and introduce a food that employees can make easily and that customers crave, innovation is vitally important. How much breakthrough thinking is required to throw together a basic cheeseburger? Not much. Innovation and fast food don't seem like logical bedfellows.
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